Meet the Logwardians - Oliver

Today we’re chatting with Oliver, Logward’s Head of Customer Success. He talks about his career, how he joined Logward, and the company's beginnings.

Hi Olli, thank you for this interview. Let’s start with your background and how you started in logistics.

I’ve been working in logistics for about thirteen and a half years. I started by working at Leschaco as a Customer Service Representative, but after a while, I realized that I didn’t want to have this job for my whole life. I wanted to move up in my career, and this would have been harder without a higher education degree. The “Abitur” (German examination at the end of secondary school) wasn’t enough. Therefore, I decided to attend a “berufsbegleitendes Studium”, which means studying part-time while working. I enrolled at the DAV (the German Foreign Trade and Transport Academy), in Bremen, which boasts a really good reputation, and where I studied International Management for three years. So I got a degree that can be compared to a bachelor’s, and which gave me the title of Business Manager. Those years were pretty tough, because I was studying twice a week after work and on Saturdays, but I knew this was necessary to reach my goal of leading a team or department in the future, or to bring new ideas to the company.

What happened work-wise after your studies?

After getting my degree, I had the chance to become part of a new department at Leschaco called “Supply Chain Solutions”. This department had been established to provide existent customers with solutions that weren’t part of the traditional freight forwarding offering. The question at the foundation of this department was: “Are there other services that Leschaco can provide?”. This is how Leschaco started offering solutions like Allocation Management and Control Tower, which is exactly what we have at Logward. Besides, working in this department was a great opportunity for me to see how the entire supply chain works, and this was the first time that I was in charge of managing my own team, which gave me the opportunity to contribute with my skills and passion for leading.

How did this bring you to Logward?

While I was working in this department we didn’t have the resources to build our own TMS, so we had to buy an external one, which was quite expensive. Around mid-2019, while talking to Jonas (CEO of Logward), whom I knew well, having been my apprentice, I found out that Logward was offering the exact same thing that we were buying from another company. After this, we decided to provide these services, Allocation Management and Control Tower, as the flagship products of Logward, not of Leschaco, and to bring our industry knowledge to Logward.

But how exactly did you start working at Logward?

For six months, from beginning of 2020 to mid-2020, I held a hybrid position between the two companies. This was a transition period, from Leschaco to Logward. It couldn’t be a switch on/off type of change, we needed time to change from our TMS provider at that time and make sure not to leave anything behind. Therefore in this phase, I was working at both companies, and supporting the Control Tower and Allocation Management building on Logward’s side.

How would you describe your role at Logward?

At Logward I’m Head of Customer Success, so I lead the Customer Success team and think of ways to improve our work and processes, to bring benefits to our customers, and to provide them with more reliability. In order to improve our procedure, we use customer feedback, such as how they use our tools. However, we’re also consultants for our customers. We are a tech company offering a service, and the advantage of acting as consultants for our customers is that this allows us to understand where and what to improve. Since we have both freight forwarding expertise and software development experience, we can figure out where customers can easily improve, and we also think of ways to do things differently.

What do you think sets Logward apart from other companies?

What differentiates us is that 50% of our team has technological expertise, in India, and the rest of the team has expertise from Leschaco and in freight forwarding, which makes us a service provider/consultant, simultaneously making processes faster with our own technology and engineering knowledge. Many other companies offer tech products and don’t provide a service. We not only give transparency to our customers, but also help them check their data, and if there is any problem, we try to help by telling them what solutions we see fit best or can make their supply chain more resilient.

One thing that you love about working at Logward.

One thing that I truly enjoy is our flexibility in structuring our working day, which I find very important considering that Logward is an international company, with half of our company in India. Being able to define our working hours really helps us working together across countries, and I can definitely see the benefits of this.

Can you tell us your “proudest” moment at Logward?

I have several “proudest” moments and, in general, I feel very proud when I receive good feedback from our customers, like when they acknowledge our efforts or they save money. However, a really “proud” moment was when we managed to help a big customer that was in a difficult situation. These moments make me realize that all the effort and work we put in every day really pays off, and that this is how we’re writing our story at Logward.

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A bit more personal now. What do you like to do on your days off?

I’m not really into hobbies. I like free time activities, but mostly to balance out work. Sometimes I play Badminton with Patrick, one of our Transport Managers, or I play games with Christian, one of our Implementation Managers. However, what I really like on my days off is some quality time with my girlfriend, and the people I love, even better if I can combine this with visiting new places. In a perfect trip I would visit a new place and do some shopping too.

Best vacation you’ve ever had.

This year I spent three weeks in Andalusia in October. Northern Germany was becoming cloudy and rainy, but the weather  in Spain was still warm. It was wonderful, also, because we had a private accommodation, which gave us a lot of independence in organizing our days and trips, like visiting Granada.

Can you tell us some German food that everyone should try?

In winter I highly recommend trying green kale.  

Rapid fire:

Mountain or beach? Beach

Sunrise or sunset? Sunrise

Music or podcasts? Music

Book or eBook? eBook

Tv-shows or movies? Tv-shows

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Logward is a Hamburg & Bangalore based logistics technology company.

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We build software, move containers, and change mindsets.

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If you have any questions or just want to say hi, reach out to mail@logward.com. Or you can book time with one of our logistics experts here.

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